Big Muff Pi

I remember buying this pedal at Herb David guitar studio in Ann Arbor, Mi. I was 14 and took the bus downtown with Nick Stark. I was really into Smashing Pumpkins at the time (thanks Nick!) so this was the sound I was looking for. I paid $55 +tax, which was about $15 higher than I should have paid but I wanted that pedal! It was the ugly, green, Russian version that was made out of surplus military material. The box was easily 3 times the size of a Boss pedal and that's just one of the many reasons why it was cool.

The Big Muff was a nice improvement from the Pro Co Rat that I was using (Sorry Kalamazoo based Pro Co, just not into your pedal). Armed with a Vox V847 and a shitty solid state Randall head with nonmatching (but still shitty) Peavey bass cabinet I was ready to rock. I used this combination at my 8th grade talent show and through the formative days of my high school punk bank, Five Finger Discount.

Some time in the late 90s the switch broke. This was a fairly tragic moment for me - my beloved pedal had failed me. Since it was broken, I figured there would be no harm in taking it apart, so I went to the local, and now out of business, radio supply store and explained to them that I needed a new switch. Of course the repair failed and the switch sat in my dad's basement workshop for the better part of a decade. Recently I stumbled upon a webpage devoted to rehousing (and as a result, rewiring) Big Muffs.

I learned that there were two issues with my repair. The first was that the Russian switch is a different mechanism from most modern switches, so the direct replacement I attempted would not work. The second, which I learned from trial and error while modding a wah, is that the switch the radio supply folks sold me was a momentary on switch - not an on/on switch.

My rehousing project included: